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Comment by ycombonator | Hacker News Reader

They will all eventually will migrate to US once the policies are relaxed. This is a typical path for immigrants who can’t get into US directly: Rest of the world -> Canada -> acquire TN Visa -> migrate to US

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Except that if it goes on for too long, a bunch of people end up building a life/business/network/etc there. Someone up-thread mentioned that this is how Hollywood ended up on the other side of the country to New York.

It seems pretty hard to argue that the US's current immigration policies aren't helping out Canada right now.

It's only hard to argue they aren't helping out Canadian companies' shareholders. Other Canadians' lives don't get better in obvious ways when yuppies move into the neighborhood.

I think, in the long term, their lives would get better. Their country would end up with more resources at their disposal, which (if we look at the countries around the world) seems fairly well correlated with quality of life of the inhabitants.

Given Canada's immigration system, it's plausible (I'd guess likely, on a national scale), but it still depends on parameters like the country's current population, or the current availability of desirous places to live. For example, it's pretty clear that without immigrants bidding up property values, British Columbia would have had much higher net interprovincial migration. We see the same thing in California, with people moving out because land is too expensive.

> They will all eventually will migrate to US once the policies are relaxed.

It takes at least 5 years to get Canadian citizenship. 5 years is a long time to build a life somewhere that people wouldn't want to migrate to the US. You are assuming it's just more money that motivates everyone.

3 years.

Ah, I thought you can only apply after 5 years and show that you were physically present for 3 years. But I guess not.

Except for the fact that your US immigration story will fully depend on where you're born. No amount Canada/Mexico/UK citizenship can change that place of birth, and the US will treat this generation of Indians/Chinese the way they always have.

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